


Perfect

by sansakatara



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aegon deserves better, Angst, Anti Rhaegar Targaryen, Elia deserves better, Resentment, Rhaenys deserves better, Rhaenys has a good memory, complicated family dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24891712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sansakatara/pseuds/sansakatara
Summary: There were three things that Rhaenys Targaryen should not have remembered due to how young she was at the time but did anyway.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	Perfect

There were three things that Rhaenys Targaryen should not have remembered due to how young she was at the time, but did anyway.

  
The remembering itself came in fragments, a mixture of sight and sound. The first memory was of her holding Aegon for the first time. She would have counted no more than two name days. She remembers the feel of the soft blue blanket, how heavy her brother felt in her arms. Their mother once said that Rhaenys had not appeared terribly impressed with him. Rhaenys replied that so far, he seemed intent on making it stay that way. When their mother’s back was turned, Aegon made a rude hand gesture. Rhaenys only smirked. She would be failing in her duty as a big sister if she didn’t mess with her little brother.

But she would be failing if she didn’t protect him either. When she was ten, she had heard how Bethany Hunter, a girl of thirteen, had been teasing Aegon. Rhaenys couldn’t exactly beat her up, because she knew well enough that her brother would only get teased more if people saw his sister beating up his bullies for him. So, enlisting the help of Sarella, she planted a fake love letter from Renly Baratheon, the most handsome boy in Bethany’s grade and whom Rhaenys had seen Bethany cast longing looks towards. Bethany met him at the bus stop as the note said, but Renly had only looked at her and called her a freak. Everybody saw her shame, and that shame protected her brother. Her mother would have said it was a cruel thing for Rhaenys to do, but Rhaenys didn’t care.

The second memory was when she was ill. Rhaenys remembers the vomit on her bedsheets, the smell of laundry detergent, and the feel of her mother’s hands as she rubbed Rhaenys back, singing a Dornish lullaby. Between the lines of her mother’s song, Rhaenys could hear her mother’s words – _I love you, my Rhae of sunshine._

The third memory was the day her father left.  
She had found them in the kitchen. “How long?” Her mother’s voice had been cold, calm, firm. Her father responded; her mother’s response had been a string of harsh, angry words that seemed to cut into Rhaenys like knives even years later. _Does not matter… betrayed me… betrayed our children…. That child will be a lasting consequence of something that only happened once…._ Rhaenys must have said or done something because her mother had turned and saw her standing there. She remembers how her mother had taken her back to bed, and stayed with her until she fell asleep.  
When she woke up again later, the world had shifted and her father was gone.

Now she is older, she understands better what she overheard. She knows that her father had been unfaithful to her mother and that he got a girl pregnant. Rhaenys doesn't hate Jon. But it is just as well that he has his Stark cousins- one of them a girl who looks so strikingly like him she truly could have been his little sister, because Rhaenys' heart is not so big. So she and Aegon did not see him very often. Mostly it happened by accident- brief smiles exchanged in a store, or chemist. 

Rhaenys doubts it accidental that they see their father even less.  
Perhaps that was why she tried so hard to be perfect when it came to her dancing. She spent hours perfecting her techniques, lost in music and routines. Her shelves were filled with trophies and medals, evidence of a talent nurtured by dedication.  
Rhaenys knows it is stupid - but there is a small part of her that tries so hard to be perfect at dancing- to drive away the fact that her father had long ago decided that she and Aegon and their mother weren’t.


End file.
